Conventional computer based order processing systems allow a person to interact with a computer system to place orders for items such as goods or services. Merchants of the items often provide access to such order processing systems over a computer network such as the Internet using a standard set of protocols such as those commonly referred to as the World Wide Web and the hypertext transport protocol (HTTP). For example, a customer of the merchant can, for example, operate web browser software to navigate to a web site that the merchant operates the computer network such as the Internet. The web site can provide an online order processing system to allow the customer to order items offered for sale by the merchant over the Internet.
During the process of placing or entering an order for an item, the customer can typically select or enter values for various properties or attributes associated with the item such as color, quantity, size, a specific configuration, or other order attributes. The customer can also enter payment information such as credit card or bank account information and can enter shipping information including a billing and/or a shipping address. Once this process is complete, the order processing system typically presents a summary of the order to the customer and allows the customer to confirm or decline acceptance of the order. Once the customer accepts the order, the order processing system places the order in a queue of orders waiting to be fulfilled by the merchant.
Fulfillment of the order by the merchant can happen in a number of ways. As a simple example, the order processing system can receive a request from a person working in a merchant facility (e.g., a warehouse or manufacturing facility) for the next order in the queue of orders waiting to be fulfilled. In response to this request, the order processing system can simply print out a copy of the purchase order at the end of the queue and can remove this order from the queue of orders to be fulfilled. The purchase order print out typically contains all of the information provided by the customer to the order processing system concerning the items be purchased, as well as payment and shipping information for the items. The person in receipt of the purchase order can then proceed to fill the order by either retrieving the ordered item(s) from existing merchant stock supplies or by the creating, building, manufacturing or otherwise obtaining the item(s) as specified in the purchase order. Once the person fulfilling the order has retrieved or completed creation of the items specified in the purchase order, the person then packages the items and ships the items to the customer according to the shipping information as specified on the purchase order. The person in the merchant facility can then indicate to the order processing system that the order has been fulfilled and the order processing system can cause payment to be transferred from the customer (e.g., from the credit card of the customer) to a merchant account.
In a conventional order processing system, once an order is accepted by a customer, the order including any associated customer information, item information, shipping information, billing information and so forth is treated as a single entity and is often assigned an order or confirmation number. After submitting an order, if a customer desires to make changes to the existing order, the order processing system typically does not allow such changes to be made to the existing order if the existing order has entered the process of fulfillment. In other words, once the merchant begins the fulfillment process for an order, customers are generally not allowed to make changes to the order.
Certain conventional online order processing systems provide a cut-off time after which time a customer can no longer make changes to an order prior to its fulfillment process. For example, consider a conventional order processing system that allows customers to order groceries over the Internet from a supermarket. An online shopper can navigate to the supermarket web site and can select various items to be delivered to the customer's home at a customer specified date and time. Once the online grocery ordering systems accepts the order of groceries by the shopper, the online order processing system provides a date and time after which no changes may be made by the customer to the grocery order. For example, if the shopper places the grocery order on Monday and requests delivery of the order on the following Friday, the order processing system may indicate to the shopper that changes to the order may be made up until 4 PM Thursday. After 4 PM Thursday however, no changes may be made to the order and a customer will receive a delivery of groceries on Friday as specified in the order as of 4 PM Thursday.